Absolute Mayhem (4 page)

At the time, I didn't know what path my future
career would take, but it was enough to know that I
had options. Little did I realise that, some eight years
later, the legal and financial stuff would be completely
out the window and, from another city on the other
side of the world, I would be doing unimaginably crazy
things such as selling my own used underwear from my
website!

After the colossal psychic debris from the fallout
with my mother, I knew that finding my father
was something I just had to do. I had pretty much lost
one parent, after all, so what did I have to lose in trying
to find the other? I knew it was not exactly going to be
easy, but somehow I needed to reconnect with him. I
think I also felt a sense of purpose, because there was so
much he didn't know in all the time he'd been gone and
I kind of wanted to set the record straight.

Although he left when I was three, I still had memories
deep inside me from the time when we were all together
as a family. He used to sing me Beatles songs when I was
a baby, so I grew up remembering many of the words
in the Lennon/McCartney canon. To this day, I still
love the Beatles because their music reminds me of my
father. I saw him as a good guy who really didn't deserve
the cruelty I'd been told my mother had heaped upon
him, particularly the way she used to put him down in
front of other people.

I hadn't seen him since I was about ten or 12. He had
a wife now, whom I'd met in the past and had liked.
They'd gone to live and work in Spain, but now, in 1994,
they were back in Sydney, and I decided I was going to
move there myself.

When I managed to get hold of him on the phone,
I told him all about my life and how things had turned
out with my mother and everything. He asked me if
I wanted to move in with him and my stepmother, so
they could help me out with my life. Of course, I jumped
at his offer.

Seeing him again was weird, because I felt like a
stranger. We had never really got to talk to or see each
other much after the break-up. And as hard as he and
my stepmum tried to make me feel wanted, I was still a
rebellious teenager and a really messed-up kid. I know
they were frustrated that they couldn't even give me
hugs, since I was always so stand-offish. They gave me
a lot of advice, although I hated being told what to do.
I found a way to deal with it – it was easier to just say
'I agree' instead of trying to argue with them about
everything. This seemed to work like a charm.

It helped that I really liked being in Sydney, which
is still the city I plan to live in someday after I'm done
with my life in entertainment. Sydney is just so beautiful
everywhere you go, and there's something different in
every suburb. The city is absolutely amazing, so modern,
with skyscrapers and colourful lights. Darling Harbour
was a new area then, and I liked what it had to offer,
with lots of clubs and restaurants on the water. And, of
course, there's Sydney Harbour itself, with the Opera
House and the Harbour Bridge. The beaches are also
wonderful, and I even liked the inner-city suburbs with
all their different ethnicities and fine-dining opportunities.
Everything was just so cool in Sydney. Brisbane was
so slow in comparison. No wonder I got up to so much
trouble there!

Sydney was a terrific place for me to start what
I hoped would be my 'brilliant career'; however, the
only problem was that I still did't know exactly what
I wanted that career to be.

Dad was encouraging me to sign up with a temp
agency, to get a job that would build on the office skills
I had picked up in the conveyancing company in
Brisbane, but I had always kept in the back of my mind
the notion that one day I would somehow work in entertainment.
So I took a catwalk and photo-shoot course
and got some pictures together for my portfolio. I got
a few jobs out of it, and I was even in the Miss New
South Wales Beach Girl competition. I did a couple of
fashion shows in the Sydney nightclubs, one for Dolce &
Gabbana lingerie and the other for a swimsuit company.
Meanwhile, I also signed up with the temp agency, and
it was through them that my career in the financial
markets got started.

I was placed in a position as a secretary's assistant at
Westpac bank – an entry-level job doing menial tasks
as a way of learning the ropes. My job was mostly about
doing administration and running around town, picking
up reports and other documents for the senior economist.
Then I moved on to doing lots of typing (reports
and forecasts that the senior economist had written),
making phone calls and photocopying and distributing
reports to the dealers. And then I did more running
around town, picking up or delivering more reports!

The job was only supposed to be for two weeks, but
after that my employers at Westpac were so impressed
with me that they offered me a full-time job as an
economics assistant. I was still only 16 at the time and
they required that I at least have my year-ten certificate
– which I didn't, of course, having been expelled from
school. I told them I did, though, and they hired me.
(Sometimes, you've got to tell white lies to get your foot
in the door!)

It was exciting at the time, particularly the rush of the
dealing room, but it's also an insane work environment.
Westpac was a good start but it was sort of like boot
camp for me. I was basically a shit-kicker, doing way
more work than my actual job was meant to require,
because one of the girls whom I worked for was so lazy
that I ended up doing most of her work. I should've had
her job, and in fact they did leave me to do it for a whole
month at one point, after she resigned.

I handled everything beautifully but they thought
I was too young to fill her role permanently, so they got
someone else in. Well, hell hath no fury like a rookie
scorned. I decided I needed more of a challenge and
applied for a job doing foreign-exchange settlements
at Lloyds Bank NZA. I went for the interview and,
somewhat to my surprise, actually got the job!

To this day, I still think of my job at the pre-ABN
AMRO Lloyds Bank as the most memorable of my
financial-markets career. We were like one big happy
family, up on the 47th floor of the Governor Phillip
Tower in Sydney (which appears in a scene in the Keanu
Reeves film
The Matrix
). It had the most beautiful view
of Sydney Harbor, and the people there were all so
cool. We'd all go out drinking and attend corporate
dinners, and I made many good friends out of it.

But shortly after, Lloyds Bank was acquired by ABN
AMRO, and I had no choice but to stay with them. We
had to move to the ABN AMRO offices, and things
suddenly changed. Their whole corporate culture was
so alien to us and it became not much fun to work there
any more, but we still managed to go out and have a
good time.

After living with my dad and step mum for a year,
I moved out and was living in Manly. I had a room in
a three-person share-house. My two housemates were
nice, although we did't hang out as friends. We all kind
of did our own thing – went to work and went out separately
after work – so I can't say I knew either of them
particularly well.

I used to get up at 6 am every day just to go surfing
before work. I paid for surfing lessons, that's how I
learned, but it was probably the hardest thing I've ever
done as a sport and I actually wasn't all that great at it.
You need sheer persistence to keep getting out there and
trying again every time you get slammed by a huge wave,
which is bad enough in itself but might also involve
getting hit by your board or being forced underwater
and then struggling to resurface.

After surfing, I would catch the JetCat – an express
catamaran that used to shuttle back and forth between
Manly and Circular Quay – to get to work, which was a
really nice way to start the day. Life was good.

In order to meet more people and try something new,
I also did a course in bartending and got a part-time job
at a pub called The Orient Hotel in The Rocks. I had a
great time tossing bottles and glasses, and I practised
when it was quiet. That wasn't oft en, though, because
the place was usually packed and really rowdy, and there
were lots of brawls there. It was so much fun. I did that
for about six months, and looking back now I don't
know how I ever managed to juggle it with working
full-time at Lloyds. I was doing at least a few shift s at the
Orient every week – mostly weekends, meaning from
Thursday to Sunday. I would go straight from work and
get changed at the bar, and then get straight on with the
bartending. (Talk about being a workaholic!) It did turn
out as a great way for me to make new friends, though.

On nights when I didn't have a shift at the bar straight
after work, I would go clubbing with the people from my
bartending job, and it was on one of those nights that
I took Ecstasy for the first time. That same crazy night,
I met my first Lebanese boyfriend and I thought I was
in love (when it was the Ecstasy speaking, of course).
I spent most of the night dancing on the podium in the
club while I was high as a kite, and so I was a serious
mess the next day. I was supposed to work at the bar
right afterwards, but I actually quit the bar job that very
day. I just wanted to go out and have a good time for a
change and felt I didn't need the extra money.

After living in Manly for six months, I left to move
to the city, because it was taking me too long to get to
work and back, especially if I wanted to go out clubbing
at night. I got myself a studio apartment on Elizabeth
Street, within walking distance to work and the clubs of
Oxford Street.

Over the next few months, my life was all about
clubbing, especially with my friend Kristie, whom I'd
met out partying one night. Kristie lived in Penshurst,
south of the city, and she asked me to move in with her.
I was getting a bit lonely and was happy to have new
friends, so I moved. I didn't care that it was almost as
far away as Manly, because now I had more people to
go clubbing with, and we would all pile into the car and
drive. We had some crazy times together, doing loads of
drugs and hanging out with a group of Lebanese men
(who generally tended to have nothing to do with the
drugs themselves), including that first guy whom I'd
met and become smitten with. It was then that a few
bad things happened in my Sydney life.

One night, I had organised to meet up with a friend's
ex-boyfriend who was a DJ and had all the Ecstasy
connections. I'd never met him before but had heard he
was a good-looking guy who drove a red Honda Prelude.
I went out with another friend and we were dressed up
to the nines, as you tend to be when you're clubbing
on Oxford Street. I was wearing this white vinyl dress,
which, I guess, might have looked a little hookerish. We
were standing on a street off Oxford Street waiting for
him, and he was running late. Suddenly, this guy pulled
up on the other side of the street in a red Honda Prelude.
He was not bad looking, but not hot either. He waved
for me to come over.

I went across the street while my friend waited. I said
his name aloud and he said, 'Yep!'

I got in the car, handed him the money and he took
it. Then I asked, 'So, can I have the Es?'

To my surprise, he pulled out his cock and started
jerking off . 'How about a blow job?' he growled.

I was shocked. 'I don't think so!' I said. He responded
by getting rough with me, grabbing my hair, leading me
to wonder what the fuck was going on. I'd given him the
money already, so I said, 'No, get the fuck off me!'

I asked his name again, and this time he said, 'No.
You were expecting a drug dealer, huh?'

I quickly jumped out of the car and stood behind it, as
if I was memorising his licence plate. I think he was still
jerking off at that point. I then ran back to his window
and said, 'Give me my fucking money back!' He threw it
at me and threatened to call the cops on me. And I said
I could do the same to him. I was so shocked. I ran in
my high-heeled boots and called the DJ and told him
what had happened. We ended up having a great night
anyway, but I was shaking for quite a while after that.

Another night, I got beaten by one of the Lebanese
guys, another of my new friends' ex-boyfriends, simply
for taking her out to a club after they had broken up.
I ended up taking him to court, and it really was one of
the more unfortunate episodes in my life – because it
brought back negative feelings from my years of childhood
abuse, all the memories that I had repressed.

The Lebanese ex-boyfriend was psychotically obsessed
with my friend, and when they broke up she begged me
to go out clubbing with her on Oxford Street, which was
a fateful move. When he saw us walking out of a club,
he came up and punched me straight in the face, right
in front of the bouncers. I blacked out and fell to the
ground, and the bouncers took him out back and sorted
him out. When I came to, I looked awful. My nose was
swollen and bleeding, and it hurt like hell.

We drove to the police station and they took some
photos. I pressed charges, but that didn't deter him. He
found us the next day and from then on he followed us
everywhere for a while, even to the police station! He
was such a cocky bastard – he would drive by the station
and rev his engine, then reverse up and down the street.
The cops finally decided to chase him but they never
caught him.

When the case came to court, the idiot represented
himself. His story changed five times and he tried to act
like a lawyer (obviously having watched one too many
TV law shows). When he actually questioned me on the
stand, he tried to put words in my mouth, but the judge
saw right through him. And his ex-girlfriend (who was,
by then, no longer my friend) was so scared of this guy
that she said she hadn't seen anything. She was looking
down the whole time while testifying and the judge
commented on her body language and didn't believe her
either. Basically, the guy got a slap on the wrist (merely
a AU$1000 fine) and a warning that if he came near me
again he would end up in jail.